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Show Flying - 8 where we couldn't stop him." "I saw him," says John Henry. "I saw him by the side of the road. He was holding out his hand to me." Tucson John comes back, walking slowly, slightly bowlegged in fatigues bleached by the sun. "Hey, Pierson, the lieutenant says to get off your ass and get back to the jeep. Time we was movin' on," says Tucson John, walking away. They stand by the jeep and the lieutenant counts the trucks beginning to move down the road. Sergeant Armstrong is leaning over the ditch pouring a canteen of cold water over his head. As the last truck rolls by he walks back to the Jeep, weaving a little. "I think I can handle it now, sir," says the sergeant to the lieutenant, glancing at John Henry out of the corner of his eye and daring him to say anything. With the sergeant at the wheel they pull out behind the convoy and proceed to pass it one truck at a time. Sergeant Armstrong is a rational man and Wilberforce trusts him to get them through this difficult maneuver safely. They swing into the left lane and wait for speed to build up, then move slowly past each truck, engine screaming, left wheels scraping along the shoulder, horn blowing, ducking between the towering trucks when oncoming traffic looms. A feel is what you have to have for this sort of thing, an instinct as unconscious |